


chambers, blood, and love

by thimble



Category: Ghost Rider (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 13:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12013416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimble/pseuds/thimble
Summary: He won’t allow himself to forget that it’s the bloodlust that urges him to do what he does, not some righteous sense of justice, to forget what could happen if Eli takes over again.





	chambers, blood, and love

He counts the days in each roar of the ignition—a double meaning because of the car and the fire, get it? Yeah, he’s not laughing either—and the stretch of road he’s travelled by the screech of tires on asphalt, and soon enough the distance he covers amounts to thousands of miles spent going around Los Angeles in circles, and the hours and minutes pile on, as fast as he drives, into ten months.

Ten months since Eli took control of him, from his body and very nearly to his soul, and ten months since he grabbed his precarious hold on the reins. Ten months since he began his search for animals that walk on two legs, though it’s not much of a hunt as it is following the source of a stench that can be found by simply glancing around him and actually taking a closer look. All his life he’s avoided doing just that, his eyes trained on the horizon, on getting out as far away from this place as possible; he’s always told Gabe to ignore the filth they’re forced to live with, swore that they’ll rise about it someday, but he can’t afford to do it now.

Not while scum slips through the cracks unchecked, while those lower than dirt crawl about in corners too dark for other cowards to see.

If he’s being honest with himself, his methods aren’t entirely the stuff heroes are made of. He won’t find his name in any of Gabe’s comic books, and he barely deserves his title of a vigilante. Tonight he chases down a group of human traffickers?—trash is trash, who fucking cares what they’re called—with eyes blazing and nostrils flared, his teeth as bared as his intentions.

The flames are for show, and the chains make quick work of them, their bullets useless if their aim is scattered by panic and fear. It’s his fists that give him the real satisfaction, his knuckles reverberating as they meet the crack of bone. A hole in their hideout reveals the real stash, the cherry on top of this shit sundae.

**Now this, boy... would make anybody furious!**

Eli’s commentary is far too gleeful to match the fury in his veins, but he can empathize with the sentiment. The captives cower in cages likely meant for dogs, and so does the man guarding them when he stares at what he’s up against.

**Do it,**

chants Eli as he points a blade at the man’s widened eyeball,

**kill him, boy! Put it right through his skull!**

He can imagine how easy it would be to sink just the edge in, how smoothly it would slice that gelatinous flesh. Like cutting through butter.

But Robbie Reyes has never done anything easy. He lets the cops have at them after freeing the prisoners, breathing labored with the effort to contain the overwhelming need to do much, much more.

Eli taunts him all the way home.

**Face it, kid, you’re no match for me.**

_ I’ll hold out forever and a half, you piece of shit. You’ll never make me crack. _

He thinks. He hopes. He won’t allow himself to forget that it’s the bloodlust that urges him to do what he does, not some righteous sense of justice, to forget what could happen if Eli takes over again.

After all, it’s also been ten months since he put Guero in a wheelchair.

  
  


The happier version would be that Guero has had it out for him from the moment they met, planting a target on his back as children and never giving him a break since. From day one it would have been nothing but scorn and animosity, and loathing him would be all Robbie would have known to do. Hate is a lighter load to carry than regret, than nostalgia, than friendship misplaced on someone who had never been loyal to him from the start.

The truthful version, the more tragic one, was that they used to get along, as much as anyone could get along with Guero. Robbie shared his homework and they had trades jokes, once upon a time. In return Guero and his crew spared him from their assaults, both verbal and physical, and even kept other thugs from going after him.

“You’re one of us, foo’,” Guero had said, lighting the tip of Robbie’s cigarette with his own. “Nobody messes with one of us.”

Until, apparently, he found out that one of his crew was related to someone like Gabe, and then he was free game. He didn’t treat Gabe like he was contagious; that would have been the better alternative.

Instead, he treated Gabe like he was a toy—subhuman, less worthy of respect than even his usual victims. Stealing his wheelchair had been the most recent addition to a long list of crimes against someone who had no chance of fighting back, and that had been the end of whatever truce Robbie had struck up with him.

Guero had wronged his baby brother. If he had shown an ounce of remorse for being so cruel, maybe Robbie could have forgiven the beat downs, the name calling, all of it, but Guero isn’t hardwired for consequences.

Robbie had taken great pleasure in smashing his face in in retaliation for the wheelchair, for every bruise Robbie couldn’t explain away, for very scrape he’d put on Gabe’s knees.

But accidentally breaking his back still churns something in Robbie’s stomach, tells him he’s far from being the monster Eli claimed he would become.

  
  


Ten months since he—not him, Eli, the son of a bitch, but his fault nonetheless—left Gabe alone to starve, to fend himself for one night too long, and they’ve never been quite the same.

Dr. Dacosta assures him it’s normal, that it’s progress, that Gabe not acting out would have been more alarming, but that doesn’t make the glares he shoots Robbie’s way hurt any less, doesn’t make his refusal to play along old inside jokes seem like just prepubescent rebellion. For the first time he doesn’t know what’s going on his brother’s—no, his best friend’s head—and for something that’s supposed to be a good thing it sure feels like the end of the world.

No, that’s an overstatement. The real end of the world comes with a phone call from Lisa, her frenzied voice straightening his spine like a rod before the words escape her mouth.

“Gabe’s gone.”

  
  


He’d been acquainted with Lisa since freshman year, but he can count what he knows about her on one hand.

  * 1\. No one seemed to have hard evidence on whether or not the color of her hair—like the inside of a grapefruit, like the standout coral in a reef—is real. He’d overheard the speculation in the locker room, and had been too disgusted to join in, but it does make a guy a little curious.
  * 2\. She had a mom and a dad at home, a rarity in the neighbourhood, and seems to get along with both of them, judging by her phone calls to them. She might as well be a unicorn.
  * 3\. She had no siblings, but she loves children, volunteering at the community center instead of doing whatever it is girls do; her affinity for Gabe, and babysitting in general, is a testament to this.
  * 4\. Her hands smelled permanently of vanilla, probably because she always had them buried in flour, sugar, and flavoring. He must mention that her chocolate cake is to die for, and that he and Gabe always asked for seconds and thirds until Gabe’s taste buds had a change of heart.
  * 5\. She was actually pretty good at Calculus.



The fact was lost on neither of them, though Lisa seemed to have fun keeping up the charade. She only lowered the walls of her pretense when they’re in his car, the moon out in full bloom, its glow illuminating her silhouette against the paltry scenery outside the window.

“I enjoy hanging out with you,” he’d said before he could stop himself, the ambiance making him too vulnerable, too honest.

Yet again, her questions were unending, and this time they were ones he can’t answer. “So how come you never asked me out?”

There are reasons he couldn’t name, and ones he can. Inexperience is one. Embarrassment is the other.

The former was sitting in his house, playing with action figures.

“I think you need a girlfriend, Robbie Reyes.” Of all the times to avoid skirting around the issue. “And I’d like it to be me.”

She holds his gaze, her lids lowered, her lips glossy and inviting.

**You kids make me sick.**

Eli was quick to ruin the mood, but that doesn’t change how he’d closed his eyes, and leaned in.

  
  


Lisa is a wreck when he finds her, and rightfully so. Her apologies spill out; useless and incomprehensible as she rides in the passenger seat, like she had less than twenty four hours before, but kissing is the last thing on their minds. Gabe is defiant, maturing child, but he’s still a child and he couldn’t have gone very far.

It’s a small comfort. It’s barely an excuse. It gets him through the night as they drive around the neighbourhood for a glimpse of dark hair and crutches, but he’s well aware that it’s shock and disbelief keeping him as composed as he is, that morning won’t be so kind. His anxieties will rise with the sun and the curtain will lift to reveal that if something happens to Gabe, it will have been his fault and not Lisa’s.

**I’d go as far as to say that there’s no use in looking for him anymore.**

Eli’s tone is taunting, something he answers with teeth and rage.

_ If you did something... what did you do?! _

Turns out Eli isn’t to blame but Gabe, who appears in the doorway in ridiculous shoes, and in one piece.

  
  


He could have a million things to say about dying, and all of them would be lies. He doesn’t remember past the adrenaline of almost winning the race, the dread of hearing the sirens behind him, or the terrifying premonition of what would happen to Gabe if he were sent behind bars. He remembers being cornered in a dead end, putting his hands up in surrender, muttering a pathetic “sorry” to a brother who wasn’t there while his eyes burned—

—and then, nothing. Not a recollection of a single bullet, even though dozens must have entered his body by the number of cops that had surrounded him, and how trigger happy they were when it came to boys like him.

What he does remember is being half-conscious as he went after the lowlifes who put holes in his body, of colliding with their car and coming out unscathed.

Every inch of him aflame, but unscathed.

It happened again when he tried to reclaim the car, when he moved out of it like water without as much as opening the door. His reflection, a skull soaked in fire, didn’t frighten him as much as it made him curious.

_ “What are you?” _

he’d asked, and Eli Morrow, before Robbie had any idea who he was, had the perfect response.

**The real question is...what are we?**

Maybe he’d been a fool to believe Eli’s claims of being a spirit of vengeance, thrust upon him to purge the streets of the garbage that littered them. Maybe he’d been lulled by power and everything that came with it: his enemies broken and bleeding, his races won and conquered. Maybe he had focused too much on Gabe’s smile when they could afford more than frozen meals and the possibility of it growing larger when they’d finally saved up enough money to move out of this hellhole.

Maybe he just didn’t want to be helpless again, and he wasn’t, with Eli by his side.

The constant itch to fight should’ve been a sign. So was the bloodlust, the strange hunger that lingered in his fingertips, dared them to crush a man’s skull.

In the end, it wasn’t the revelation of Eli being a serial killer and a Satanist that was the deal breaker.

He was Tio Maldito, estranged uncle and token black sheep; the cause of one too many of his parents’ fights, and the catalyst that made Gabe the way he was.

It was personal.

  
  


“Fuck you,” is one of the first things Gabe tells him after his return, right before hurling a video game controller at his face. The pain registers in his nose, then somewhere deep in his chest. The anger comes next, the way it had been building since Gabe had nothing but venom to hurl at him and at Lisa.

Not all of it is his. Eli’s influence is greater by the second, and it’s his loss of control that has him lunging at the one person he would’ve protected with all he had, if it were any other day. His fingers squeeze around Gabe’s throat, cutting off his air supply, and Lisa’s feeble arms grab him back to reality.

**Did you just try to kill him, Robbie? He’ll never trust you now!**

Eli’s laughter echoes inside his skull as Gabe sputters on the ground, gasping for air, but it doesn’t stop him from screaming:

“I hate you, Robbie! I hate you!”

And he sounds like he means it.

  
  


Johnny Blaze was more than a mentor to him. He was a savior—though built more like a villain and rough around the edges—but they had their rocky beginnings.

He hadn’t been thrilled to find out there were others like him, with power than greater than his, but it’s that excess of power that had brought Eli to his knees and Robbie to his senses, and what he felt for the man was more than respect.

It was gratitude.

“So if I’m not a ghost rider, am I some sort of evil thing, then?”

“It looks to me like that’s entirely up to you, Robbie.”

Different, to be handed a choice. All his life he’d simply dealt with the cards he’d been given, but here was a man telling him that he was strong enough to make the right one.

Difficult, too. “If you give in to despair, Eli Morrow will take over, once again, and he will hurt the ones closest to you.”

Each of Johnny’s warnings would come true, but Robbie hadn’t known it at the time. He was just thankful to finally fight alongside someone else, with another pair of eyes watching his back as they dealt blow after blow against Zabo and his men. In those moments, they could have taken on anything.

And when it was over, Johnny had offered, no, promised him a place to belong.

“For better or worse, you’re part of our family now. You’re a ghost rider.”

And how could he ever repay that?

  
  


Once again, he had put Gabe in danger by not watching him enough, not being careful enough, not being enough, period, to notice that Eli had been whispering in his ear, ripening him for the picking. His baby brother was being toyed with, once again, and he’s powerless to stop it. All he can do is go after them, jaw set against the sight of Gabe’s body being used as a weapon against Ivanov, as a tool for revenge.

“Monster!” Ivanov screams, practically pisses his pants, to which Gabe replies, “I’m a hero!”

Gabe had called Robbie that, hadn’t he? Would he call him that now?

He can’t lay a hand on Gabe, not after everything. He accepts the broken ribs, the cracked wrist, the chipped teeth; he’s motionless as he’s tossed around by Gabe’s possessed form. Amidst rubble and ash he groans against the pain but can do nothing else but plead with the brother he hopes is still in there and listening, begging for both their sakes.

It’s not just his soul at stake anymore.

“Gabe, please trust me.”

_ Even though you have no reason to. _

“I’ve always been there for you, and I always will be.”

_ I know I haven’t been lately, but I won’t let it happen again. _

“I’m your brother.”

_ That, at least, hasn’t changed. _

“I love you, Gabe."

_ More than anything on this earth. More than myself. More than life. _

He had been raised to fear God, but he had always been too busy, too bitter for church, but he’s praying to something he doesn’t believe in the pause before Gabe’s soft voice says, “I love you too, Robbie,” despite Eli’s protests, despite the wedge that been driven between them by ten months and a room filled with darkness.

“You’re my hero.”

  
  


It would not be an exaggeration to say that Gabe is his whole world, and he liked it that way. It had been like that since he listened for Gabe’s heartbeat in their mom’s belly, since Gabe, swaddled in cloth, came home from the hospital with eyes the same shade of brown as his, since Gabe had taken hold of his finger with his tiny fist.

The doctors said something was wrong with him, that he’ll never be like the other kids, but he had never been like that to Robbie anyway. No other kid was as special or as important. He opened Robbie’s eyes to things he couldn’t have dreamed of by himself, and Robbie felt like he could do anything as long as Gabe kept looking at him like that.

Like he had a cape on, even though he only had a makeshift blanket and a bad haircut.

When their parents left them to fend for themselves, Gabe was the only thing he had. A smile to come home to after a long day at the body shop, a snore in the night to combat the loneliness that threatens to settle over him, a reminder someone existed that made the tension in his neck and the strain in his muscles worthwhile.

Gabe wasn’t a burden, like Eli said he was. He was Robbie’s brother, the only one he’ll ever have.

Too much has already been said, and still there’s too much to say.

All anyone needs to know is, everything he does, he does it for Gabe.

  
  


When he has Eli under his thumb again, not docile but detained, it’s Ivanov who tests his patience, putting a trigger to Gabe’s head. Like this is a bank robbery where a hostage is enough to shield the criminal, like anything would be enough to save anyone from Robbie’s anger at having a gun pointed at his baby brother.

Everyone has their limits. This happens to be his.

It’s not Eli’s killing intent that ignites the flame that consumes Ivanov, but his own fury. His pulse is remarkably calm for a guy setting someone on fire, but there are no tears to be shed for a man like Ivanov. The pyre is a fitting end, his voice like crackling embers as he roasts like a stuck pig, his flesh melting off his bones, screaming until he has nothing left to scream with, until he’s nothing more than a skeleton aflame.

**Now you’ve done it, kid.**

Eli will never let him forget what he’s just done.

**By killing Yegor Ivanov, you’ve bonded our souls eternally.**

He doesn’t need the reminder. He can feel Eli wearing him like a second skin, from his toes to his fingertips to the matched beating of their hearts.

**Your will may be strong, kid, but you’re no match for me. You will murder again.**

Robbie knows. He’s prepared, now, the resolution easier to bear now that he has a cause, the only he’s ever had, to kill for.

“I’ll make you a deal.” He spits the words out, unflinching as the Ivanov’s burning body paints a warm glow to their surroundings, a sunrise as bloody as the pact he’s about to make.

“Find me the worst scum on the planet. Find me those who torture, kill, and rape... find me the foulest, darkest degenerate souls to walk the earth... people like you, Eli Morrow, and I’ll gladly destroy them.

“But I will kill no one else.”

Eli’s grin ticks at the corners of his own mouth, pleased and grotesque:

**"You’ve got yourself a deal."**


End file.
